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THE WORK 

OF 

WASHINGTON IRVING 



BY 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 



WITH FOUR PORTRAITS 




11 m 



NEW YORK ' " / 

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

1893 



Harper's "Black and White" Series. 

Illustrated. 32mo, Cloth, 50 cents each. 



The Work of Washington 
Irving. By Charles Dudley 
Warner. 

Edwin Booth. By Laurence 
Hutton. 

The Decision of thb Court. 
A Comedy. By Brander Mat- 
thews. 

Phillips Brooks. By Rev. 
Arthur Brooks, D.D. 

George William Curtis. By 
John White Chadwick. 

The Unexpected Guests. A 
Farce. By William Dean 
Howells. 

Slavery and thb SlaveTradb 

in Africa. By Henry M. 

Stanley. 
The Rivals. By Frangois 

Coppee. 
The Japanese Bride. By 

Naomi Tamura. 



Whittieb : Notes of his Life 

and of his Friendships. By 

Annie Fields. 
Giles Corey, Yeoman. By 

Mary E. Wilkins. 
Coffee and Repartee. By 

John Kendrick Bangs. 
James Russell Lowell. An 

Address. By George William 

Curtis. 
Seen from the Saddle, By 

Isa Carrington Cabell. 
A Family Canoe Trip. By 

Florence Walters Snedeker. 
A Little Swiss Sojourn. By 

William Dean Howells. 
A Letter of Introduction. 

A P'arce. By William Dean 

Howells. 
In the Vestibule Limited. 

By Brander Matthews. 
The Albany Depot. A Farce. 

By William Dean Howells. 



Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, NeW York. 

For sale by all booksellers, or -will be sejtt by the publishers, 
postag^e prepaid, on receipt of price. 



Copyright, 1893, by Harper & Brothers. 



All rights reservea. 



/^'--f-^^ 



nZ 



THE WORK OF WASHINGTON 
IRVING 

This year we commemorate the one 
hundred and tenth anniversary of the 
birthday of a man of letters. It is thir- 
ty-four years since he dropped his pen, 
and was laid to rest by that lordly river 
which his genius has enshrined in the 
mind of the world with the legendary 
Rhine and the historic Tiber. For that, 
also, flows not only through a land of 
beauty and by famous cities, but through 
a realm of the imagination — perhaps the 
most abiding of all our possessions. 

Our race is fond of erecting statues 
to those who have become conspicuous, 
images raised generally through admi- 
ration, sometimes by vanity. America 



joins in this effort to save personalities 
from oblivion. The spirit is commend- 
able, if the selection is not always fortu- 
nate, nor the execution of these images 
always faultless. At least, we are get- 
ting in our streets and public places a 
great company of extraordinary figures, 
which may, at the worst, remind the 
passing generation that moves among 
them that it is mortal — if not ugly. Al- 
ready of some of them Art is asking, 
What are they ? and of other bronze im- 
pertinences, which are not yet oxidized, 
the passers-by are asking, Who are they? 
After a third of a century, Brooklyn, 
which commemorates the birthday of 
our earliest man of letters, has adorned 
its beautiful park with his effigy ; but 
the city of his birth has no statue of 
Washington Irving. 

This is not because the memory of 
Irving is not dear, because the man is 



forgotten, not because his books are not 
read — can we charitably say it is because 
he is still felt as a living presence in our 
short literary life ? It is certainly better 
that multitudes should ask in New York 
why a man has not a statue, than that 
multitudes should ask why he has a 
statue. His fame does not need it. But 
the city of his birth, to which he gave 
the distinction that letters alone can 
confer, compelling respect for the genius 
of a young country, one of the creators 
of the literature whose great stream can 
directly trace one of its sources to his 
pure and sparkling spring, owes it to it- 
self to remove the reproach of insensi- 
bility and ingratitude. 

Washington Irving was born in the 
year of the recognition of the Independ- 
ence of the United States, 1783 ; six 
years later the first President under the 
Constitution, inaugurated in New York, 



placed his hand on the head of his name- 
sake and future biographer ; and seven- 
ty years after that benediction, a year 
before the election of Abraham Lincoln 
and the severest trial the Constitution 
has undergone, in almost the hour when 
the last proofs of the "Life of Washing- 
ton " were returned to the press, Irving 
died. His life occupied the period from 
Washington to Lincoln, the era of the 
youth of the Republic, whose manhood 
began only when it -cast off the last 
trammels of colonialism in getting rid 
of slavery ; and the period, also, which 
saw the birth of an American literature 
and the first fruits of its splendid prom- 
ise. Let us inquire what were Irving's 
relations to this period of promise, of 
formation, of creation. 

When Irving came into the world, in 
New York, in 1783, the city was only 
beginning to recover from the disasters 



of war and conflagration. It was a 
small city, of mostly narrow and crook- 
ed streets, clustered on the point of the 
island. Its population was less than 
24,000.* Its first directory, 1786, a 
primer of 82 pages, had the names of 
900 individuals and firms, and 3340 
houses. In 1789 its population was 
about 29,000, of whom some 2300 were 
slaves. The city was irregular in shape, 
and the main portion of it was on the 
east side. Except in the strictly busi- 
ness portions, the houses were scat- 
tered and surrounded by gardens. On 
the west side there were buildings from 
Bowling Green to what is now Reade 
Street; on the east side the city extend- 
ed as far north as Broome Street. There 
remained still a number of old Dutch 



* For these details I am largely indebted to the excel- 
lent monograph on New York City in 17S9, by Thomas 
E. V. Smith. A. D. Randolph & Co., 1889. 



houses, with high peaked roofs and ga- 
ble ends to the streets ; but the prevail- 
ing style of architecture was English, 
and most of the structures were frame 
buildings with brick fronts and tiled 
roofs. Chambers Street was the limit 
of the thickly settled part of the city ; 
the populous centre was about Trinity 
and St. Paul's ; the dwellings of the 
rich and aristocratic were around the 
Battery, and on Wall and parallel streets. 
The Battery was the fashionable lounge, 
and the favorite evening walk was to 
the bridge over the stream where Canal 
Street now is. The streets were dimly 
lighted by oil lamps ; the water supply 
was obtained from the Tea-water Pump 
in a well in Chatham Street, near the 
end of Pearl, which was fed from the 
Collect Pond, and carried about the city 
in carts, at the price of threepence a 
hogshead. In 1784 people who drank 



_i 



this tea-water objected to the habit some 
citizens had of doing their washing in 
the Collect. The sanitary arrangements 
were more effective then than they have 
sometimes been since. Every house- 
holder was required, under penalty, to 
remove all the dirt from his premises, 
between March and December, into the 
gutter before ten o'clock, and have it 
carted away before twelve o'clock, every 
Friday ; and the sewerage system was 
simple — it consisted of the negro slaves, 
a long line of whom might be seen late 
at night wending their way to the river, 
each with a tub on his head. 

The prominent buildings on Broad- 
way were Trinity Church and St. Paul's 
Chapel ; the Kennedy mansion. No. i, 
a spacious two-story brick ; the McComb 
mansion, occupied by Washington as 
the President's residence; and the fa- 
mous hostelry, the City Tavern, between 



Thames and Cedar streets. Conspicu- 
ous on the line of Murray Street, facing 
the park, which was surrounded by a 
wooden fence, were the Bridewell (a 
prison for criminals), the almshouse, 
and the jail (a debtor's prison). Be- 
tween the almshouse and the jail stood 
the gallows, in a gaudily -painted Chi- 
nese pagoda ; it was much used, for the 
death penalty attached to a great num- 
ber of crimes. Near it were the stocks 
and the whipping-post, presided over by 
the public whipper, who had a yearly 
salary of £2^. Public whipping for 
minor offences, imprisonment for debt, 
without limit of time, till 1789, with an 
allowance of eightpence a day for food, 
and slaves in all houses of importance, 
were features of those good old times. 
At this date the town had only one bank 
and one fire insurance company. 

In 1789 the city, owing to the "Purl- 



tan invasion," was largely Anglicized, 
but Dutch customs survived; there was 
at least one Sunday service in Dutch, 
and the prominent names in society 
and politics revealed a Dutch, a Hugue- 
not, or a Scotch origin. The town was 
even then noted for its hospitality, and 
society was gay, not to say convivial. 
Fashionable society in 1789 consisted of 
about three hundred persons, though 
there was not so much class distinction 
as in Philadelphia. It is a curious note 
on the slow process of natural selection 
in a changing and rapidly increasing 
city, that it took almost a century to 
raise this limit to four hundred. But it 
had other attributes of a capital. A trav- 
eller complained that board was twice 
as high in New York as it was in Phila- 
delphia, which was twice as large. The 
patriots of the press, however, denied 
this, and said that board was only three 



lO 



dollars to seven dollars a week, with 
from seven to nine dishes each day, and 
four kinds of liquors. 

The city had twenty-two churches, 
representing thirteen denominations — 
the Reformed Dutch, Protestant Epis- 
copal, French Huguenot, Quaker, Lu- 
theran, Jewish, Presbyterian, Baptist, 
Methodist, Moravian, German Reform- 
ed, Roman Catholic, and Independent 
Congregational. Sunday laws were very 
strict. Two constables walked the streets 
during divine service to keep order. 
Complaints were made in the newspa- 
pers that the theatre was open Saturday 
evenings, and that children played in 
the streets Sunday evenings. To swear 
profanely and publicly cost a person 
three shillings, or, in default of payment, 
if he were over sixteen years old, an 
hour in the stocks. 

The town amused itself at the John 



II 



Street Theatre, between Broadway and 
Nassau Street, the only playhouse in 
the city, till the opening of the Old Park 
in 1798. There was given in 1789 the 
fourth American play, played by a regu- 
lar company, "The Father," by Will- 
iam Dunlap, artist, playwright, and his- 
torian of the American theatre. The 
same year was produced his farce called 
"Darby's Return," which enjoys the dis- 
tinction of being one of the few things 
that ever made the Father of his Coun- 
try laugh heartily. In the elevated lan- 
guage of the Daily Advertiser, " Our 
Beloved Ruler seemed to unbend, and 
for the moment give himself to the 
pleasures arising from the gratifications 
of the two most noble organs of sense, 
the Eye and the Ear." The American 
newspaper was born with language fully 
developed. Washington's last visit to 
this theatre was on November 30, 1789, 



12 



when the orchestra played the " Presi- 
dent's March," a melody afterwards de- 
veloped into " Hail, Columbia," com- 
posed by the leader, a German named 
Phila. 

Among the minor public amusements 
of the year were the exhibitions of cu- 
riosities, live animals, etc., a solar micro- 
scope, wax -works, a lecture by " a man 
who had been for thirty years an Atheist," 
a balloon ascension, a boat - race, two 
horse-races, and a few musical concerts, 
besides the playing on the violin by a 
Mr. Van Hogen, of Holland, who an- 
nounced that he would prove before any 
judges of competent taste that he was 
the first master of music who had ever 
visited America. 

Columbia College had about thirty 
students in 1789, and graduated eleven 
that year. There was no public-school 
system, but there were many private 



13 

schools, the directory giving the names 
of fifty-five teachers. One of the schools 
was kept in the old City Hall, and was 
so noisy as to disturb Congress, which 
sat in the next room. There were three 
schools for young ladies, at a charge of 
about ;^8o a year, including washing, 
and for this sum there could be learned 
reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic, 
grammar, geography, deportment, plain 
sewing, embroidery, cloth-work, filigree- 
work, japanning, drawing, painting, mu- 
sic, dancing, and French. There were 
also dancing- schools, singing -schools, 
and schools where playing cunningly on 
instruments was taught. The piano, 
"esteemed a complete accompaniment 
for the female voice," was introduced, 
being imported from London, and sold 
by J. Jacob Astor, at No. 8i Queen 
Street. 

The only literary men of the day 



14 

were Philip Freneau, captain of a mer- 
chant vessel, writer of satirical verses, 
•whose works were published in 1789; 
Samuel Low, a bank clerk, composer of 
verses and plays ; and the dramatist 
William Dunlap. There were two lit- 
erary societies, however — that for the 
Promotion of Useful Knowledge, and 
the Uranian. Some idea of the remu- 
neration of authors may be had from 
the fact that Noah Webster sold to a 
New York bookseller the right to pub- 
lish his popular spelling-book in New 
York, New Jersey, the two Carolinas, 
and Georgia, for five years, for the sum 
of two hundred dollars. 

The town could boast twelve book- 
sellers and publishers. The publica- 
tions were mainly reprints of English 
books, such as Paley's " Moral Philoso- 
phy," Percival's " Father's Instructions," 
"Emma Corbettj or, the Miseries of 



15 

Civil War," "Advice from a Lady of 
Quality to her Children, in the last 
stage of a lingering illness," " The 
Nightcap," by Mercier, " The Beauties 
of Dr. Johnson," "The Life of Baron 
Trenck." There was published also 
" the first American novel," called 
" The Power of Sympathy ; or, the Tri- 
umph of Nature;" founded upon the 
remarkable suicide of a young lady in 
Boston in 1788. Those fond of poetry 
could read " The Conflagration, a Poem 
on the Last Day," by the Rev. Benja- 
min Francis. Jedidiah Morse's "Amer- 
ican Geography" was published this 
year, and Dr. Gordon's "History of the 
Rise, Progress, and Establishment of 
the Independence of the United States 
of America." In the boys' schools much 
stress was laid on rhetoric and oratory. 
Dr. John W. Francis gives us a glimpse 
of a school he attended with Irving in 



i6 



1797) when the gentle Washington was 
set up to declare " My voice is still for 
War ;" and Francis, seven years Irving's 
junior, asked the audience to "Pity the 
sorrows of a poor old man." The New 
York Society Circulating Library, scat- 
tered by the war, was revived in 1789, 
and by 1790 it had 250 subscribers and 
3000 volumes. 

What little art existed was directed to 
the most difficult of all achievements, 
that of portrait painting. The most dis- 
tinguished artist was an Irishman, John 
Ramage, whose miniatures were much 
liked, and who painted Washington. 
During the President's term in New 
York much of his time must have been 
given to sitting for his picture. He was 
painted also by William Dunlap, after- 
wards one of the founders of the Na- 
tional Academy of Design ; by Edward 
Savage and by Joseph Wright. In 1773 



17 



he sat to Col. John Trumbull. In 
1789 there were ten drawing and paint- 
ing schools. Mr. James Cox gave 
lessons for five dollars a quarter in the 
painting of coats-of-arms, and of silk, 
satin, and muslin gowns and flounces. 
Mr. Ignatius Shnydore instructed in 
the painting of landscapes, figures, and 
flowers, both in oil and in water-colors, 
and also did coach and sign painting, 
frescoing and gilding. 

In 1788 Noah Webster began the 
publication of the America7i Magazine, 
which did not last till 1789, in which 
year the city had five newspapers : the 
Daily Advertiser, the Daily Gazette, New 
York Packet, tri-weekly; New York 
Journal, weekly: and the Gazette of the 
United States, edited by John Feno, a 
sort of court journal. By 1807 the 
number of newspapers had increased to 
nineteen, eight of which vyere dailies, 



and there were several of monthly and 
occasional issue. The newspapers of 
1789 had only a few hundred subscrib- 
ers each, and were filled with adver- 
tisements and auction sales, extracts 
from European journals, short clippings, 
long communications on religious and 
political topics, and very short editorials; 
but the latter often made up in person- 
ality and venom what they lacked in 
length. 

Among the newspapers of 1807 were 
the Evening Post, Hamilton's organ ; 
the America7t Citizen, which reflected 
the opinions of the Republicans and of 
De Witt Clinton ; and the Morning 
Chronicle, established by Aaron Burr, 
and edited by Dr. Peter Irving. In 
this appeared the essays signed by 
Jonathan Oldstyle, smart criticisms on 
the theatre and actors of the day, and 
written by Peter's brother Washington, 



19 

then a youth of nineteen. Burr used to 
cut these out and send them to his 
daughter Theodosia. This connection, 
no doubt, accounts for Irving's sympathy 
with Burr, and his attendance on Burr's 
trial for treason in Richmond. 

Although the New York of that 
period was a shabby and unsightly 
town, we shall have an inadequate idea 
of it if we do not glance at the cos- 
tumes of its inhabitants. These were 
picturesque in cut and color. A plain 
undress for men was a long blue riding- 
coat with steel buttons, scarlet waistcoat, 
and yellow kerseymere breeches with- 
out embroidery. Still simpler was a 
dark- green coat with silver buttons, a 
green striped waistcoat, black satin 
breeches, silver shoe and knee buckles, 
white silk hose, and voluminous white 
neckcloth. The figures of the dandies 
were upholstered by the tailors, and 



20 



they must have been beautiful objects. 
John Ramage, the miniature-painter, 
wore a scarlet coat with mother-of-pearl 
buttons, white silk waistcoat embroid- 
ered with colored flowers, black satin 
breeches with paste knee-buckles, white 
silk stockings, large silver shoe-buckles, 
and a small cocked -hat on the upper 
part of his powdered hair, leaving the 
curls at his ears displayed ; he carried a 
gold snuff-box and a gold-headed cane. 
There was then, as now, a dangerous 
class increasing in the community, 
namely bachelors, who dreaded mar- 
riage on account of the extravagance 
of the women. The extravagance of 
women in dress was much talked of, as 
it always is; but in color and eccentricity 
it was not more remarkable than that of 
the men ; and a steadfast feature of it is 
one that we can comprehend, the size 
and height of the hats, which then, as 



21 



now, were the occasion at the theatre of 
much expressed and unexpressed pro- 
fanity. 

Although New York was the commer- 
cial and political capital, it was isolated, 
owing to the lack of transportation. 
Communication with Europe was irregu- 
lar. Travel inland was both dangerous 
and uncomfortable. A stage started 
for Albany three times a week, the trip 
lasting three days in summer and four 
days in winter, and the charge was four- 
pence a mile; but, as the journey lasted 
from five in the morning till ten at night, 
the passengers got the worth of their 
money. Three times a week, also, 
travellers could start for Boston, and 
by riding from 3 a. m. till 10 p. m., six 
days, accomplished the journey in safety, 
if they were not upset on the horrible 
roads or drowned in the rivers. Two 
stages ran daily to Philadelphia, except 



22 



Saturday and Sunday; the fare was two 
dollars, and the usual time of the jour- 
ney three days. In the city there were 
few private carriages, but those were 
ostentatious. 

The city of Irving's boyhood was just 
beginning its commercial activity; of 
literature it had none, of art little; there 
was considerable luxury, together with 
the survival of quaint manners and bar- 
barous customs. Though there were 
many men and women of refinement 
and culture, the amusements of the 
young men were free, not to say boister- 
ous, and there would seem to have been 
little to nurse such a genius as Irving's. 
The town was full of bitter political 
rivalry and animosity, and the youth am- 
bitious of distinction naturally sought law 
or politics. Irving tried a little of both ; 
but politics speedily disgusted him, and 
the law never gained his serious interest. 



23 

In estimating Irving's achievements 
in imaginative literature we need to keep 
in mind this picture of the town and 
country of his boyhood, and the little in- 
citement to such a career as his in the 
society of the day. That society had 
its charms, but love of literature was 
not one of them. His father, William 
Irving, was a Scotchman from the Ork- 
ney Islands, who went to sea when a 
boy ; near the close of the French war 
was a petty officer on a British armed 
packet-ship plying between Falmouth 
and New York; and in 1761 he married 
Sarah Saunders, of the former place, a 
beautiful girl, the granddaughter of an 
English curate. The young couple came 
to New York in 1763, and William Ir- 
ving quit the sea and entered into trade. 
He was a strict Covenanter, a deacon 
in the Presbyterian Church, who ordered 
his household according to the severe 



24 

rules of his sect, a man of probity, who 
covered a kind heart with an austere 
manner. Washington, who was a gay, 
fun-loving, humorous boy, chafed under 
this discipline, and very early escaped 
and was confirmed in the Episcopal 
Church, a reversion to his mother's com- 
munion, in which nearly all his brothers 
and sisters subsequently joined. With 
his tender-hearted mother the lad was 
always in full sympathy, and from her 
he had a full measure of affection, al- 
though she mourned that the droll and 
sportive boy was not more seriously in- 
clined to religious concerns. His amia- 
bility of disposition, which always made 
him friends, must have been one of his 
most striking characteristics. When he 
was twenty, and made a tour through 
the wilderness to Montreal with Josiah 
Ogden Hoffman and his family, the par- 
ty was received in state by the Indians 



25 

at Caughnawaga, and Irving was per- 
suaded to go through the ceremony of 
exchanging names with the savages. 
The significant name they gave him 
was " Vomonte," which means, " Good 
to Everybody." 

It was the father's wish that Washing- 
ton should go into business, but he 
showed no inclination for that, and af- 
ter an imperfect education in private 
schools, he entered a law office at the 
age of sixteen. Why he did not enjoy 
the advantages of Columbia College, to 
which his brothers Peter and John were 
sent, is not explained, nor how he ob- 
tained his father's consent to study 
law; for the latter doubted if the prac- 
tice of the law was an honest calling. 

But the father need not have been 
anxious on this account. The boy never 
acquired enough knowledge of law to 
change the bent of his mind, nor did he 



26 



ever have practice in it enough to test 
his honesty. He took his education 
into his own hands. Behind the screen 
of Coke and Blackstone he read ro- 
mances, poetry, and books of travel and 
adventure. These studies, however, did 
not seriously interfere with another part 
of his education — a knowledge of the 
social life of the town. He was fond of 
pleasure. The young society was not 
specially intellectual, and not at all lit- 
erary. It was a survival of the old 
Dutch sociality, with a dash of English 
dress and manner; picturesque still in 
costume, given a little to roistering and 
gallant ways, and it had its complement 
of dandies, who were fond of dress and 
admiration, and of belles whose beauty 
was enhanced by daring, and who had 
that fresh charm of gayety and senti- 
ment which renders the sex irresistible. 
That Irving was an observer as well as 




From the Fraser Gallery 



27 

an idler in this society is apparent in the 
shrewd satire on contemporary life in 
the first papers which he published,when 
he was nineteen — comments on the the- 
atre, signed by Jonathan Oldstyle, and 
the " Salmagundi Papers," written in 
conjunction with his eldest brother Will- 
iam (who was thought at that time to 
be the genius of the family) and J. K. 
Paulding. Irving was then twenty-four, 
and had returned from a two years' so- 
journ in Southern Europe, a voyage 
which restored his impaired health. 

But perhaps the best part of the boy's 
education was obtained out-of-doors. 
Always in delicate health, he passed 
much of his time in the country, wan- 
dering about Westchester County with 
a gun in his hand, exploring the Cats- 
kills, voyaging and rambling up the 
Hudson, visiting the Mohawk, and once 
penetrating the wilderness as far as 



28 



Montreal. He early loved the country, 
and later in life, when he established 
himself at Sunnyside, it was a passion 
with him. We hear of little execution 
by his gun ; he became no more of a 
sportsman than a lawyer ; but he dear- 
ly loved to wander about in the silent 
woods, by the sparkling streams, in the 
solitude of the hills, under the open sky, 
and in the recesses where Nature whis- 
pered to him her secrets, and dream the 
dreams of youth and romance. It was 
in those rambles that one day he met 
Rip Van Winkle ; it was in those idle 
hours of observation that he gained the 
power to make all the world see what he 
felt in his heart, the serene charm and 
beauty of nature. 

And here we come to Irving's first 
great service to the literature, to the life, 
of his era. The appreciation of scenery, 
the love of nature for itself, and not as 



29 

a setting for ostentation or a refuge from 
self, is comparatively a modern affec- 
tion. The taste for it our ancestors did 
not have. The scenic beauty of the 
New World did not much appeal to 
them. The country, except for agri- 
cultural purposes, was unobserved by 
the society of Irving's boyhood. He 
taught them to see the Hudson as we 
see it now. But this was not all. He 
not only pointed out to his contempora- 
ries the natural beauty to which they had 
been blind, he not only created for us a 
sentiment about nature, but he brought 
nature as an all-pervading element into 
literature. He did not do this so fully 
and emphatically as Cooper did, but he 
was a pioneer who opened the door to a 
new world. This sentiment for nature 
penetrates Irving's earlier work, and it 
increased with his years. Before his 
day the aspects of nature, the beauties of 



30 

landscape, the influence and the charm 
upon the mind of forests, mountains, 
streams, the majesty, the terror, the love- 
liness of inanimate creation, were little 
expressed, probably because little felt, 
in poetry, in the essay, in fiction. The 
romances of Irving's greatest contem- 
porary in imaginative literature, Walter 
Scott, are filled with exact portraitures 
of the localities of his stories so true 
that the traveller can identify the scenes. 
These are settings for the story, geo- 
graphical localities. The use of nature 
by Cooper is different. Natural scenery 
becomes with him not merely the sce- 
nery set for the play, but an essential part 
of the drama. The beauty and the ter- 
ror of the wilderness, the loneliness of 
the prairie, the weirdness of the mount- 
ain pass, the exquisite hues and forms 
of a cultivated landscape, the slumber 
or the rage of an inland lake, are all 



- 31 

elements, we might say moral elements, 
in his fiction. The importation of this ele- 
ment into imaginative literature, which 
has been carried to excess by modern 
novelists and poets, was primarily due 
to Irving and Cooper. 

It is not the purpose of this com- 
memorative address to enter upon bio- 
graphical details, or even to sketch 
Irving's life; but, in the study of his 
development, his love for Matilda Hoff- 
man and the untimely death of that 
lovely girl in her eighteenth year, can- 
not be passed over. Her loss was a 
terrible shock to a nature which had a 
large vein of melancholy in it. The 
love for her continued all his life a 
tender sentiment, deepening into a 
holy memory. This is not saying that 
he never thought of marrying, or that, 
circumstances favoring, he would not 
have married; for the companipnship of 



32 

woman was always dear to him. But, 
as a matter of fact, this loss inclined 
him to a separate life until the habit of 
bachelorhood was confirmed. In the 
formative years of his life he did not 
make himself a home ; he became a 
wanderer; he did not follow the law, he 
did not pursue the slight business con- 
nections he had formed with his broth- 
ers; untrammelled by the care of wife 
or child, or fixed residence and occupa- 
tion, he became a man of letters. 

It was in the period of depression from 
this loss, in the year 1809, when Irving 
was twenty-six years old, that "A His- 
tory of New York, by Diedrich Knicker- 
bocker," appeared. This was recognized 
at once, and remains one of the great 
masterpieces of humor, notwithstanding 
its somewhat puerile introduction. In 
one way it is among the greatest feats 
of genius. For it is absolutely a creation. 



33 

There is little, almost nothing, in the 
character of the Dutch, either in the 
Netherlands or in New York, on which 
to base it. The society of New Amster- 
dam, judged by contemporary accounts, 
and judged also by its descendants, was 
gay and full of vivacity; not specially 
intellectual, but intelligent, tolerant, and 
not lacking in the thrift and enterprise 
and love of liberty that had made the 
Netherlands for two centuries the first 
of civilized nations. But by the force of 
Irving's genius his romance was sub- 
stituted for history. The world accepted 
it as history, so far as the portraiture of 
character, habits, and manners is con- 
cerned, and the impression he made will 
probably never be effaced. It is impossi- 
ble for the Dutchman in New York ever to 
escape the humorous conception of him 
which Irving imposed upon the world. 
He created the Knickerbocker Legend. 



34 

This conception is as inseparable from 
New York as the form of the island 
and the encircling shores of the bay. 
By this a great wrong was done to the 
truth of history. It may be that this 
perversion has inflicted an injury upon 
the city, by casting the light of bur- 
lesque over an honorable past, and it may 
have affected the developing character 
of the town. On the other hand, it is 
of distinct advantage to a new city to 
be invested with a certain halo of 
romance, and the Knickerbocker 
Legend has given great distinction to 
the island of Manhattan. It is its most 
all -pervading and descriptive name, 
and whether its influence has been good 
or bad, its creation and imposition is a 
unique feat in literature. 

But I wish to draw a distinction be- 
tween the Knickerbocker Legend and 
the legendary, romantic, and poetic 



35 

interest with which Irving invested the 
environs of New York, and especially the 
Hudson. This was his second great 
service to literature and to his native 
land ; and it is acknowledged without 
any reservation. No educated person 
goes up the Hudson without thinking 
of Irving. By his creative imagination, 
by a few strokes of his pen, he has 
done for that lovely river something of 
that which a thousand storied years 
have done for the Rhine. He has 
clothed it with romance. How far this 
was a creation, and how far it was an 
adoption of current, household legends 
among the Dutch settlers, it may not 
be possible now to determine exactly. 
Legends there were which Irving heard, 
and even Rip van Winkle was probably 
one of the mysteries of the Catskill 
highlands, but it was his genius that 
gave these folk-tales form and added 



36 



them to the romance of the world. 
' When modern criticism measures Irving 
by the development of modern fiction, 
or by the realistic standards of this year 
of grace, it is well to remember these 
achievements. 

Irving's second sojourn abroad lasted 
seventeen years, from 1815 to 1832. 
Most of this time was spent in England, 
Paris, Dresden, and Spain. During this 
peripd were produced the " Sketch 
Book," '^ Bracebridge Hall," "The 
Tales of a Traveller," "The Alham- 
bra," and the " Life of Columbus." It 
was the period of the culmination o 
his fame. Everywhere he enjoyed the 
friendship of those most distinguished 
in letters and exalted in social life. 
During his visit to Rome, when he was a 
youth of twenty-two, Washington AUston 
was his friend, and he was intimate with 
Coleridge, ten years his senior, when 



'i\ 



37 



the poet's subtle mind was only just 
beginning to be clouded by the opium 
ihabit, to which excessive physical suffer- 
fing had induced him to subject himself. 
In England his genius as a writer called 
out the warmest admiration of men so di- 
verse in their tastes as Scott, Coleridge, 
Byron, and, later, Dickens; while both 
the man and his books gained the love 
of the whole English reading public. 
He had pretty thoroughly run the round 
of society and of literary experience, 
and when he at last finally settled him- 
self in his lovely retreat at Sunnyside, 
after the four years of his mission to 
Spain, he had a whole world-drama to 
look back upon. He thought there 
could not be many surprises left for 
him. But the suddenly conjured-up 
Second Empire offered one. In 1853 
he wrote to his sister, who had been 
presented at court : " Louis Napoleon 

6 



38 



and Eugenie Montijo, Emperor and 
Empress of France! one of whom I 
have had as a guest at my cottage on the 
Hudson; the other, whom, when a child, 
I have had on my knee at Granada." 
And he wondered if he should live to see 
the catastrophe of her career. 

One reason for Irving's universal 
popularity before 1830 was that he 
brought something new into literature. 
He set a new fashion in imaginative 
narrative. Scott was greatly pleased with 
his stories of the "Brom Bones" order, 
and somewhere, I think (though I can- 
not verify this), alludes to it in a letter, 
after the appearance of the "Sketch 
Book," hailing the advent of a story 
or tale of a novel kind. Perhaps the 
public dimly comprehended this at the 
time, and I am not aware that emphasis 
has since been laid on this original 
achievement. But Irving was the in- 



39 

ventor of the modern short story, which 
has been brought to such perfection 
in our day, and has been especially 
elaborated, refined, and made an art in 
America and in France. This, how- 
ever, was not a breaking with tradition; 
it was an evolution, the progress of 
which can be clearly traced. Its sug- 
gestion was in the character sketches of 
the Spectator and of Goldsmith. To 
this was added, from the German, an 
element of the mysterious, of the super- 
natural, perhaps we should say the 
humorously supernatural, the personal 
eccentricity unexplained, the haunted 
chamber, the ghostly apparition of the 
shadowy little men in black, and the 
headless horseman variety. The charac- 
ter study was thus elaborated, em- 
broidered with incident, made in little a 
transcript of life, a picture on a small 
canvas with all the suggestion and 



40 

largeness of a big canvas, a complete 
moral or artistic conception, a satisfying 
story of human life, in short, in one 
chapter. This differs altogether in 
character and method of treatment 
from the old French conte and the 
Italian tales, the witty anecdotes, which 
Chaucer used. Irving was perfectly 
well aware what he was doing. In a 
letter written in Paris in 1824, to his 
friend Henry Brevoort, he replies to the 
suggestions that he ought to write a 
novel. Before quoting, however, the 
passages in point, I will give another 
which relates to what has been said of 
his love for nature. He longs, he says, 
to be once more in New York. "There 
is a charm about that little spot of earth, 
that beautiful city and its environs, that 
has a perfect spell over my imagination. 
The bay, the rivers and their wild and 
woody shores, the haunts of my boy- 



41 



hood, both on land and water, abso- 
lutely have a witchery over my mind. I 
thank God for my having been born in 
so beautiful a place, among such beauti- 
ful scenery ; I am convinced I owe a 
vast deal of what is good and pleasant 
in my nature to the circumstance." He 
then goes on to say that what he values 
most in his writing is that which prob- 
ably escapes the great mass of his 
readers, who are more intent on the 
story than on the way it is told — as 
most of the readers to-day are. 

"For my part, I consider a story 
merely as a frame on which to stretch 
my materials. It is the play of thought 
and sentiment and language ; the weav- 
ing-in of characters, lightly, yet express- 
ively delineated ; the familiar and faith- 
ful exhibition of scenes in common life ; 
and the half-concealed vein of humor 
that is often playing through the whole — 



42 

these are among what I aim at, and 
upon which I felicitate myself in pro- 
portion as I think I succeed. I have 
preferred adopting the mode of sketches 
and short tales rather than long works, 
because I choose to take a line of writ- 
ing peculiar to myself, rather than fall 
into the manner and school of any other 
writer." He gives other reasons that, 
as he says, " have induced me to keep 
on in the way I had opened for myself," 
instead of attempting a novel. "It is 
true," he adds, " that other writers have 
crowded into the same branch of litera- 
ture, and I now begin to find myself 
elbowed by men who have followed my 
footsteps ; but, at any rate, I have had 
the merit of adopting a line for myself, 
instead of following others." 

Among these followers was Charles 
Dickens, who most frankly and fully ac- 
knowledged his indebtedness to Irving 



43 

j in conversation with his contemporaries 
I and in his private letters. It is not too 
much to say that the early sketches and 
! character studies of " Boz " were inspired 
by his constant and loving reading of 
Irving, and that there he found the mod- 
el of his short stories. For his genius 
also sought and found the humor and 
the pathos in lowly life. " I should love 
to go with you," he writes to Irving, " as 
I have gone, God knows how often, into 
Little Britain and Eastcheap and Green 
Arbor Court and Westminster Abbey. 
I should like to travel with you, outside 
the last of the coaches, down to Brace- 
bridge Hall. It would make my heart 
glad to compare notes with you about 
that shabby gentleman in the oil-cloth 
hat and red nose, who sat in the nine- 
cornered back -parlor of the Masons' 
Arms j and about Robert Preston, and 
the tallow-chandler's widow, whose sit- 



44 

ting-room is second nature to me; and 
about all those delightful places and 
people that I used to read about and 
dream of in the daytime, when a very 
small and not over-particularly taken- 
care-of boy." 

That delightful mingling of reality 
and mystery and spectral appearances, 
with the sentiment of humanity and a 
touch of caricature, in the " Christmas 
Stories," arose from the same sugges- 
tion ; for Irving was the inventor of 
Christmas in literature. He first put 
into letters the modern sentiment of 
that holiday, and was largely the creator 
of it — of that feeling of kindliness and 
brotherhood and charity which the gen- 
ius of Dickens expanded to such a wide 
possession of the thought of the world. 

It is well to remember that two things 
in which American literature has most 
distinguished itself — the short story and 



45 

the literary use of Nature — are of Amer- 
ican origin. 

It was Irving's idea — and it is the 
idea of every humorist — that he must do 
some grave work upon which to rest his 
fame when he has gained the attention 
of the world, and that his reputation 
cannot be trusted to the spontaneous 
product which is the original fruit of his 
genius. He ^5[anted respect as well as 
admiration. And he knew his world, 
besides rightly estimating his own pow- 
ers, when, with his imagination kindled 
by the theme, he sat down to write the 
" Life of Columbus." This exploit en- 
larged and solidified and dignified his 
reputation. It brought him the royal 
medal and the Oxford degree. The la- 
bor was congenial to him, from his fa- 
miliarity with Spanish life and litera- 
ture, and he had access to unused 
material in the archives of Madrid. 



46 



Using this original material, and pur- 
suing, as far as was possible in his day, 
the modern methods of investigation, 
the result was a most valuable contribu- 
tion to history. The charm of its nar- 
rative style might have been anticipat- 
ed, but the elevation and the masterly 
handling of the theme must have sur- 
prised those who only knew Irving as a 
master of the lighter imaginative writing. 
But, after all, the value of the book was 
due to the imagination which enabled 
him to conceive and show to the world 
the character of the discoverer of Amer- 
ica, his nobility, his faith, his supersti- 
tion, his weakness, and his strength — 
the man Columbus. Since Irving's day 
new documents have been discovered, 
the modern historic methods have been 
invented, a flood of new light has been 
poured upon the adventures and the 
adventurers of the fifteenth and six- 



47 

teenth centuries, the best equipped schol- 
ars have subjected all the evidence to 
microscopic examination, and a whole 
library has been written about Colum- 
bus and his era. And yet I am able 
to quote the recent testimony of Mr. 
Harisse, the acknowledged expert in 
Columbian history and learning, that 
Irving's "Life^.of Columbus" Remains 
the best that has been written. It only 
needs, as Gibbon needs, notes and the 
corrective criticism in details. Irving's 
conception of Columbus stands. 

This seems to me a very important 
fact, and worth considering. Why is it ? 
It is simply because Irving had in a high 
degree the literary gift. And it is to be 
noted that this is as essential in a his- 
tory or a biography as it is in a piece of 
purely imaginative writing. It includes 
many things besides the power of ex- 
pression or a style of distinction. It is 



48 



a sense of proportion, of perspective, so 
that things may be put in their just re- 
lations, clarity of vision, the power of 
conceiving a subject in the round, so 
that it shall be eliminated from con- 
fusing details and stand out a distinct 
image, and that faculty, as often con- 
structive as creative, which we call imagi- 
nation. The books written with this gift, 
whatever the subject, are those that live. 
The others, whatever their temporary 
value for scholarship, scientific investi- 
gation, information, live, if they do live, 
as books of reference, statistics to be 
consulted. Without this gift no amount 
of scholarship or industry can produce 
literature. In the case of Columbus, 
Irving's " Life " of him will only be su- 
perseded when a man of equal genius 
makes use of the new material, by an 
act of creative imagination, to evolve an 
image of the real man. The quality in 



49 

Irving that enables us to see Rip van 
Winkle is exactly the quality that en- 
ables us to see Columbus. These re- 
marks apply essentially, also, to the 
" Life of Washington." The events and 
the characters of the Revolutionary era 
have been rewritten and will be rewrit- 
ten j we resent, in the case of Washing- 
ton, as in the case of Lincoln, the at- 
tempt to put him into mythology. Irving 
left out of his study certain character- 
istics, certain personalities of tempera- 
ment and habits that belong to a real- 
istic portrait ; yet his conception of the 
character in its large relation to his 
time and his work is the one that stands. 
It is the only conception that can ac- 
count for what he was and what he did 
in the world. 

It is time to turn to the personality 
of Irving. As we should expect from 
his writings, he had the nervous, artistic 



50 

temperament ; he shrank from personal 
notoriety : he was sensitive and shy; and 
he had the manner of a lazy observer of 
life. A drawing by Vanderlyn, made in 
Paris in 1805, and a portrait by Jarvis 
in 1809, present him to us in the fresh 
bloom of manly beauty. The face has 
an air of distinction and gentle breed- 
ing ; the refined lines, the poetic chin, 
the shapely nose, the sensitive mouth, 
the large dreamy eyes, the intellectual 
forehead, and the clustering brown locks, 
are our ideal of the author of the " Sketch 
Book " and the pilgrim in Spain. A 
relative, who saw much of our author in 
his latter years, writes to me : " He had 
dark -gray eyes; a handsome, straight 
nose, which might perhaps be called 
large; a broad, high, full forehead ; and 
a small mouth. I should call him of 
medium height — about five feet eight 
and a half to nine inches — and inclined 



51 

to be a trifle stout. There was no pe- 
culiarity about his voice, but it was pleas- 
ant and had a good intonation. His 
smile was exceedingly genial, lighting 
up his whole face and rendering it very 
attractive ; while, if he were about to 
say anything humorous, it would beam 
forth from his eyes even before the words 
were spoken. As a young man his face 
was exceedingly handsome, and his head 
was well covered with dark hair ; but 
from my earliest recollection of him, he 
wore neither whiskers nor mustache, 
but a dark -brown wig, which, although 
it made him look younger, concealed a 
beautifully shaped head." 

He had not the impressive personality 
of some men of genius ; he did not talk 
much in a mixed company or at table, 
but he was a capital raconteur^ and ex- 
ceedingly entertaining, with a flow of 
reminiscences, among his friends. And 



52 

he had a great capacity for friendship. 
He loved the company of refined and 
cultivated women, and he was every- 
where a welcome guest. There is a 
pleasant picture of him in the family of 
Louis McLane, then Minister to Eng- 
land, in 1831, to whom he was Secretary 
of Legation the year before his return 
from his long sojourn in Europe. As 
an example of his playful humor, I will 
read some unpublished verses which he 
wrote that year to the eldest daughter 
of the house, the charming Miss Rebecca 
McLane. I think I may venture to read 
the sportive tribute of a man in his fif- 
tieth year to a girl of nineteen, over sixty 
years after it was written : 

' ' There's a certain young lady, 
Who's just in her heyday, 
And full of all mischief, I ween ; 
So teasing ! so pleasing ! 
Capricious ! delicious J 
And you know very well whom I mean. 




From a photograph in the possession of 
Dr. John C. Peters 



53 



"With an eye dark as night, 
Yet than noonday more bright, 
Was ever a black eye so keen ? 
It can thrill with a glance, 
With a beam can entrance, 
And you know very well whom I mean. 

* ' With a stately step — such as 
You'd expect in a duchess — 

And a brow might distinguish a queen, 
With a mighty proud air, 
That says ' touch me who dare,' 
And you know very well whom I mean. 



"With a toss of the head 
That strikes one quite dead, 
But a smile to revive one again ; 
That toss so appalling ! 
That smile so enthralling ! 
And you know very well whom I mean. 

' ' Confound her ! devil take her ! — 
A cruel heart-breaker — 

But hold ! see that smile so serene. 
God love her ! God bless her ! 
May nothing distress her ! 
You know very well whom I mean. 



54 



"Heaven help the adorer 
Who happens to bore her, 

The lover who wakens her spleen ; 
But too blest for a sinner 
Is he who shall win her, 
And you know very well whom I mean.' 



Irving's position in America as a 
man of letters was that of Lowell, and 
that of Curtis, namely, that of one of 
first citizens of the Republic. He 
had the admiration and the friendship 
of the most distinguished public men. 
But he had no taste for public life. He 
\declined the honor of a candidacy for 
/the office of Mayor of New York ; he 
declined to run for Congress ; he de- 
clined the post of Secretary of the 
Navy in Van Buren's Cabinet. When 
he accepted, in 1842, at the solicitation 
of Webster, the mission to Madrid, it 
was with personal reluctance, and in 
the desire to acknowledge the honor 



55 

done to his profession, and in the patri- 
otic hope that his knowledge of Spain 
would enable him to improve and so- 
lidify the friendly relations of the two 
governments. It was an appointment 
that the Spaniards felt to be a compli- 
ment to their nation. It turned out to be 
an arduous and trying mission, for Spain 
was in the throes of political and mili- 
tary revolution, and the highest good- 
sense and diplomatic tact were required 
in our minister. But Irving possessed 
the qualities of a born diplomatist, and 
the country has never anywhere been 
more creditably represented abroad 
than it was by him in Spain. He 
seems never to have had the notion 
that he should increase his popularity 
at home, or could best serve the inter- 
ests of his country, by making himself 
disagreeable to the court to which he 
was sent. 



56 



It is true that Irving's main attitude 
in life was that of an observer, ar- 
tistically sympathetic, even humane- 
ly sympathetic, but never identifying 
himself prominently with a cause or 
a movement. This attitude requires no 
apology. It was in his nature. The 
work that he did in the world must be 
done in this temper; it may have been 
of less or more service than the work 
of others; but we are to judge him by it. 
He was by nature conservative, and his 
sense of literary proportion made him 
see affairs calmly and not as a partisan. 
He appeared to many unsympathetic. 
He seems to have been untouched by 
the anti-slavery struggle. But he was a 
patriot; he loved his country supremely; 
he believed in its institutions; as he him- 
self wrote, " I am a Republican without 
gall, and have no bitterness in my 
creed." Although a Federalist, and 



57 

deploring the War of 1812, the British 
burning of Washington aroused his 
patriotic indignation, and he volun- 
teered for service. In 1850 his position 
was with Webster and Clay. There is 
no doubt where he would have stood in 
186 1. If he were living in these days 
he might have applied to him the un- 
descriptive epithet given to those who, 
in their own opinion, try to go right 
when their party goes wrong ; who, in the 
opinion of others, condemn the faults in 
their own party by condoning the same 
faults in the opposite party. But when 
we have criticised him for what he was 
not, there stands the man, there is his 
work, there is his character; and few 
men have done more to make the 
American name honored throughout 
the world. And he did this as a man of 
letters. 

Although Irving depended upon his 



5S 



moods for inspiration, he was never long 
idle,, and he was a prolific writer. The 
list of his works is a long one, and they 
were fairly remunerative. He received 
from the sale of his copyrights in Eng- 
iland over ^12,000 ; for the rental of his 
copyrights in America prior to 1843, 
$63,000. From 1842 to 1848 his books 
were out of print j his Philadelphia pub- 
lisher thought there was no market for 
them, and Irving believed that his pop- 
ularity as a writer was at an end. In 
1848 Mr. George P. Putnam became his 
publisher, and his copyright receipts up 
to the time of his death, in 1859, were 
P8,ooo. From that time till Septem- 
ber, 1863, there was realized from his 
works over $34,000. The total receipts 
for his works, to the close of 1863, were 
nearly $240,000. There is no report 
since that date, but many complete edi- 
tions of his writings have been published 



59 

which have had a large sale. There has 
been a revival of interest in Irving with- 
in the past five years, and since the to- 
tal expiration of his copyrights, and the 
publication of many cheap editions, he 
is being read by a large class whom he 
never reached before. 

It is well, periodically, to commemo- 
rate the life and work of such a man. 
He enlarged the horizon of literature, 
he added lustre to the name of the re- 
public. When I place his achievement 
against the background of his native 
city in his boyhood, and the literary pov- 
erty of our undeveloped country, it as- 
sumes very great proportions. When I 
turn to his books, which were of incal- 
culable value to his own generation, and 
find how sane and unexaggerated they 
are, how artistic in form, how reverent 
of honesty and nobility, how full they 
are of the genuine humor and pathos of 



6o 



life, I feel that they still belong to the 
living literature which has power to make 
the world better. Fashions change, but 
genius survives all fashions. 



THE END 



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